FEATURE - From the Tower by Bob Frey

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Thu, 26 Jun 2003, 05:43 PM

Three Men And A Mule

By Bob Frey
Photo copyright 2003 Auto Imagery, Inc.

Jim's F/S Stocker

No matter how long I stay in this sport I will always be amazed and impressed with the number of folks who have been participating in drag racing for ten, twenty, thirty years and more. Jim Parsons is the latest addition to this growing list. Jim has been racing “all my life, or at least it seems that way,” he recently told me. Moreover, this son of a former sprint car driver has been racing with the same car for the better part of the past thirty years. “I stared racing in about 1962 with an old ’55 Chevy with dual carbs on it. I tried drag racing because it looked easier than sprint car racing. I saw my dad get hurt pretty badly when he was doing that so I figured drag racing was for me.” Jim actually is one of the few racers who can say that they participated at a NASCAR sanctioned drag racing event when he raced at the old Deland Airport in Florida in the late 60’s. “In 1966 I bought a brand new Chevy II, L-79, and I actually pushed it off the showroom floor. Then I went to Vietnam and my wife stayed home and made the payments on it. After getting out of school and moving to Seattle, my partner, Terry Harmon and I turned the Nova into a Super Stocker in 1974. We did pretty well, setting some national records, winning class championships and a few races.” After years of racing at tracks all over the country, Jim finally decided to take a break from drag racing and try something else. “I tried road racing, go karts, Formula 2000 and some other stuff for a while and all the time the Chevy II just sat there.” In fact it just “sat there” for about 17 years. Then, six or seven years ago, Jim gave some thought to getting back into the sport that he always loved, drag racing. “My wife, Linda, loves cars, in fact she was the Sports Car Club of America’s ‘Crew Person of the Year’ in the Kansas City region a few years ago. She actually told me when I talked about quitting racing altogether that this isn’t ‘just about you, it’s about me, too.’ That’s when I knew that we’d go drag racing again.” He converted the Chevy II from a Super Stocker back into a Stocker and currently runs it in F/S.

Like most journeys, Jim’s trip back to drag racing has taken a very strange turn. “A friend of mine, Steve Tate, knew Smokey Yunick, and when Smokey died about two years ago his wife called Steve and said that she had some stuff around the shop and she asked Steve if he would like to come down to Daytona to look at it?” Well, anyone in the auto racing world would jump at an opportunity like that, and Steve did and he invited Jim to come along. “When we got there we found lots of stuff. There were even several pairs of old boots that Smokey had worn and autographed. It was amazing,” Jim said. As they went through all the stuff they came upon an old Chevrolet engine that had the words “Record Run” written on it. It was an early 1954, 265 cubic inch engine and they both knew that he had stumbled onto something big. Well, indeed they had. It turned out that this was one of the first V-8 engines to power a Chevrolet Corvette, and it had also been in the Corvette that the legendary Zora Arkus-Duntov drove to a record speed of 150 miles per hour in 1955 and the one he used to develop his famous Duntov camshaft. Well, now that they had the engine all they had to do was find the car that went with it. After lots of searching and phone calls Steve was told that the car, with the original Chevrolet experimental log book, was in the Carolinas and that it actually belonged to the Bible Broadcasting Company. “I’m sure there’s a real story about how they got it,” Jim said. Steve tracked it down and bought the car and now he was the proud owner of a real part of Corvette and racing history. It wasn’t it great shape, but Steve had it and that begged the questions, what do you do with it now?

Once he had possession of the car and the Smokey engine, Steve called Jim and asked him if he would like to help put it back together. “I knew that it was a huge project but how many times do you get to work on a little piece of racing history?” Jim asked. “I actually researched the entire history of the car and I’ve got to tell you that I know more about this car than a human being should know.” Once they knew what they had and understood the legacy of the car, Jim, Steve, and another friend, Dana Mecum, who was partners in the car, set out to restore the first high performance V-8 Corvette that ever existed. “I did the chassis, driveline and engine work, while Randy Barnes and Steve did the body,” Jim said. “And before you knew it, the car was probably in better shape than it was back in 1955 when it was Duntov’s test mule.” Ironically, after surviving for all of these years the car just barely escaped major damage from the tornadoes that struck Kansas a few weeks ago. “It really was a miracle that car wasn’t damaged since the tornado completely demolished the house and partially destroyed the garage that it was in,” Jim said.

In this, the 50^th anniversary year of the Corvette, the car, which is designated as EX-87/5951, will be shown at the Bloomington Gold show, the ultimate showcase for Corvettes. “After that I’m sure the guys will be offered some pretty serious dollars for it and I can only imagine what they’ll do with it,” Jim said. The car, which was always designated as a “mule,” because it was never meant to be driven anywhere except the race track and was always an experimental vehicle, is credited with being the first Corvette and American production car to ever exceed 150 mph, and it is documented as going over 160 miles per hour with Duntov at the wheel at the GM Proving grounds in Arizona in 1955. It is quite a historical machine and Jim Parsons is glad to have been a part of its restoration.

With the project completed and the mule gone, Jim will return to his normal life, which includes serving as an environmental consultant, a father to two boys, Tony and Mark, and a husband of 37 years to Linda. Plus he’ll go back to his first love, drag racing, which, he says, has taken a back seat to the Corvette for the last ten months. He’ll participate in a couple of divisional races and a few national events over the remainder of the year. Between times Jim and his family will enjoy life in Kearney, Missouri, where they live on the edge of the original Jesse James farm. “I’ve been in racing or around it as long as I can remember and I guess I’ll be doing it for a while to come,” Jim said. “I actually ran a drag strip once while in college, Intermountain Raceway in Pocatello, Idaho and I’ve competed everywhere from Salt Lake City and Bremerton Raceway to tracks in the Midwest, the east coast and California.” And just think, he’s done it all with one car. Now in all my years of being involved with the sport, I haven’t found many racers who can say that. Of course I don’t know many who spent the better part of a year working on a 50 year old mule, either.